This document, titled, Municipal and County Engineering Design, Construction, Operation and Maintenance of all Public Works is a collection of articles, presumably collected and written by government officials. One of the articles in the collection, “How Good Roads Developed: Polk County, Florida”, references not only the development of roads in Polk County but also outlines the economy of Polk County in terms of the principle commodities and statistics like the per capita wealth and realty values. The book was published in 1922 and thus gives insight to the communities it references as they were at that time.

In terms of general context, the 1920s were a dichotomous time for African Americans. On the one hand, this was the time of the Harlem Renaissance, which celebrated African American culture and, to an extent, empowered African Americans. Additionally, in some cases, segregation had strengthened the African American community through adversity. On the other hand, the early 20th century saw some of the most violent racism and discrimination against African Americans since the end of the Civil War. The Supreme Court case Plessy v. Ferguson instituted legalized discrimination with its decision of “separate but equal”, a series of legal decisions had disfranchised almost all African Americans in the South, and lynching mobs were a constant threat to southern African Americans. Furthermore, as a result of the premature end to reconstruction, a pattern of exploitation of black laborers by white landowners was established. Movements like the Harlem Renaissance, however, indicate a sense of pride in African Americans and a celebration of a developing culture that was influenced heavily by the adversity facing African Americans. From primary and secondary sources referencing Polk County Florida in the early 20th century, an example of this flourishing of culture in the face of socioeconomic hardship can be seen.

The primary source directly reveals the economic conditions in Polk County, Florida. Additionally, when combined with information from the secondary sources, the primary source indirectly reveals the issue of socioeconomic status of African Americans and the culture and community this status cultivated in Polk County Florida. According to the document, in 1922, “Polk County [was] an agricultural county”[1]. Additionally, “in Polk County the finest Florida oranges and grapefruit are produced to the extent of 3,500,000 grates a year…[and] in Polk County, too, one-fifth of the world’s phosphate is mined”[2]. In total these “phosphate mines in Polk County…are valued at $19,000,000”[3], in 1922. The immensity of these raw commodities present in Polk County Florida indicates that a large labor force would have been needed to extract the raw goods and ready them for production. Furthermore, the poorer residents of the County, which most definitely included the African American community, would probably have provided this labor. Kevin Boyle echoes this description of Polk County, in his book Arc of Justice: A saga of Race, Civil Rights, and Murder in the Jazz Age.

By Boyles’ account, “there was white Bartow, the solid respectable center of Polk County. And there was black Bartow, a cache of sun-baked homes separated from the center of town by the railroad tracks and the massive wall of segregation”[4]. According to Boyle, Bartow attracted many African Americans despite the Jim Crow conditions because of the availability of “ample work on the railroad, on the land, or in the mines”[5]. Although the industries in Bartow provided paying work for African Americans, the conditions resemble slavery more than anything else. White mine owners hired desperate black men who would work for a dollar a day because “few white men would take the brutally hard work—breaking stones with pick and ax, sunup to sundown…seven days a week”[6]. Despite the exploitation, racism, and segregation facing the African American community of Bartow, Boyle points out that “the workers also built a world for themselves”[7]. East Bartow, the black part of the town, became a bustling community. Black businesses including general stores, barbershops, real estate agencies, and restaurants opened[8]. Black social clubs and churches were also built, which served to bring the community together[9]. Boyle’s account reveals the underlying message in the primary source document, which is, Polk County consisted of an economy based on economic exploitation of African American labor. Additionally, Boyle’s account indicates that the segregation and racism faced by African American residents of Polk County played a significant role in shaping and influencing the community and culture that developed there.

These aspects of the African American communities in Polk County are also mentioned in David Nicholls’ article Migrant Labor, Folklore, and Resistance in Hurston’s Polk County: Reframing Mules and Men. In his article, Nicholls’ analyzes Zora Neale Hurston’s experience in a Polk County lumber camp as recounted in her novel Mules and Men.Nicholls’ aim is to demonstrate how African Americans resisted white exploitation of black labor through folk tales[10]. Nicholls states that a study done in 1931 “notes that black workers usually held the least attractive positions”[11]. Nicholls’ provides a quote from the study that claims the exploitation of African American workers in the turpentine camps of Florida and Georgia was notorious[12]. According to Nicholls’, Hurston was drawn to these camps as a subject of her writing because “[the camps] brought together strands of folklore from different sources”[13]. By using examples from Hurston’s book that demonstrate how African American workers used folk stories as an act of resistance, Nicholls’ demonstrates that Hurston’s “text displays folklore’s function as an everyday form of resistance in the Jim Crow South[14]. Ultimately, Nicholl’s argument not only demonstrates the exploitative labor conditions for African Americans in Polk County, but also indicates how Africa American culture developed in these conditions and how it was used to resist white oppression.

Finally an encyclopedia entry from the Encyclopedia of African-American Culture and History titled “The Blues in African-American Culture” gives a short overview of Zora Neale Hurston’s time in the lumber camps of Polk County. It was this trip to the lumber camps of Polk County, the entry claims, that was “Hurston’s most important contribution to our understanding of African-American blues culture”[15]. Additionally, the entry reveals the significance of the culture Hurston encountered in the Polk County Lumber Camp: “the sort of rough-and-ready backwoods blues that Zora Neale Hurston encountered in Polk County, Florida, remains a surprisingly vital presence among a working-class black clientele in parts of the Deep South”[16]. This entry indicates the significance of the African American culture that developed in Polk County as a result of exploitative labor conditions for African Americans.

Revisiting the primary source document, a municipal record of counties and their maintenance needs, it describes Polk County in 1922 as a thriving community that “ranks very high in per capita wealth and in realty values”[17]. However, as the research suggests, this applies only to the white community of Polk County. Furthermore, the economic prosperity this document portrays as existing in white Polk County and the conditions of African Americans that the secondary sources portray indicates the continuation of an economic system based on slavery. Additionally, as the document completely ignores the African American community of Bartow, this indicates that for the most part, Southern Governments, especially that of Polk County, disregarded and ignored the plight of African Americans in the early 20th century. Ultimately, these conditions significantly impacted the culture of African Americans that developed in the Deep South.